


The Other Way Round

by cherryblossomriot



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angel Dean Winchester, Angel Sam Winchester, Angst, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Canon-Typical Violence, Castiel and Dean Winchester Have a Profound Bond, Demisexual Castiel (Supernatural), F/F, F/M, Fluff, Gabriel Being Gabriel (Supernatural), Human Castiel (Supernatural), Hunter Castiel (Supernatural), Hunter Gabriel (Supernatural), Hunter!Castiel, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Openly Bisexual Dean Winchester, Other, Pansexual Gabriel (Supernatural), Slow Build, Slow Burn, angel!dean
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:41:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23709319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryblossomriot/pseuds/cherryblossomriot
Summary: Castiel Novak was alive. And then he was dead. And then he went to Hell and was resurrected. Living again, he tracks down his eccentric, slightly power-hungry, definitely annoying older brother Gabriel, and they set off to find whatever raised him from perdition and slide down the slippery slopes of what Heaven has in store for them.Or, alternatively, a story in which Castiel is a Hunter, Gabriel is his older brother, and Dean is the contradictorily goofy, charming, and terrifyingly powerful Angel that's been watching humanity for far too long.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Castiel/Original Character(s), Gabriel/Kali (Supernatural), Gabriel/Original Character(s), Gabriel/Ruby
Comments: 11
Kudos: 37





	1. Resurrection

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what this is, but reverse!verse has kind of consumed my life.

Castiel Novak died on the 13th of May, 2008. There was nothing vastly unusual about his death, which was ironic, considering his occupation, and the fact that he’d spent his whole life expecting to die from supernatural causes. Instead, he jumped between his brother and the bullet of a very inept mugger, and caught it right below the heart. It was strange, he thought, as he fell, feeling everything and nothing at once, how the bullet lodged in his chest felt so solid, so real. Because everything about this, from the look on the mugger’s face, to the mere reality of it all, felt like a dream. But, then again, he usually woke up before he hit the ground. Blood surged up his throat, past his lips, blossomed across his shirt in an impressionistic rose against grey cotton, and all he knew was the rapidly fading sky and the pain. Somewhere, three thousand worlds and millions of years away, his brother’s hands were cradling his face, strangled screams rose in the air, his name hurtled from Gabriel’s mouth and reached up, up, up. But, in the end, he was selfish. It was over, and he didn’t want to fight. He knew Gabriel would never forgive him, for sacrificing everything, but he was tired. Taking one last trembling breath, that wrecked his ribs and shuttered through his whole body, he let go. And that was the end.

Or, the beginning.

He ended up in Hell. Not that he was surprised, he’d been living in constant anticipation and fear of this very fate for months now, the result of trading his soul for his brother’s life. It was a stupid move, and maybe stepping in front of his brother to catch a bullet was a stupid move too, but he regretted neither. His older brother was all he had, and he sure as hell (no pun intended) wasn’t going to let him die because of Castiel’s stupid mistakes. Hell was...hell. Time didn’t exist, day and night, year by year, they meant nothing. Everything was measured by agony, by the limits each demon could drag him to. They mocked him, taunted him, twisted and warped his perspective, until his brother was carving out his heart and saying, _I never really loved you, you were always just a burden, I’m glad you’re gone,_ and his mother was kissing his forehead and telling him, _I never wanted this for you, I’m sorry._ The junior demons were bad enough, they cackled at his screams and spat in his open mouth, but the older ones, the more demented and powerful ones, those were worse. They all specialized in different kinds of torture, in different ways to make him bleed. They strapped him down and made him wait, wait, wait, let him listen to the raw, gut-wrenching shrieks of others, until he was practically begging for them to hurt him, to drag their knives over his skin and drain him dry. They showed him his loved ones, made him watch as they defiled them, then defiled him. But as bad as they were, they couldn’t even compare to Alastair. He took Castiel’s soul into his black as shadows, black as sin claws, and debauched and shredded and destroyed. He kept going, cut after cut, until there was nothing left. Then there was a _yes_ , and the torture changed. After he'd destroyed and pillaged, in the ruins of Castiel’s soul, Alastair began to create. He stuck a knife in his hands and whispered, _let go_ , and that was all Castiel needed. He was selfish, he was inverted, he was _feral_. He tortured others with a ferocity that tore into himself. He was an animal, he was a monster, he was a demon. He didn’t enjoy it, until he did. A scream he ripped from someone he’d gutted until they had nothing left but the ability to beg, _please, please, please,_ over and over, pierced through his haze of blood and nothing and bubbled under his skin and...delighted him. In a moment of rare clarity, of almost detached awareness, he stood back, heart racing, from adrenaline, excitement, or maybe fear. Blood was everywhere, he held a heart in his hands, and there was a soul writhing and sobbing beneath him. At first, it was sickening, but in a far off way, like he was watching a bad movie, one that he didn’t care about and he knew wasn’t real anyway. Then, in a wave, it hit him. With maddening clearness, he saw himself and he was afraid. It was paralyzing, realizing he was a monster he couldn’t control, couldn’t even kill. And then he hated it. He hated himself with a fierceness, and in some mangled manner of thinking, he found himself thinking that he deserved torture, he deserved every form, he deserved to hurt these people and feel the pain that erupted in him when he did it, because how could he just sit here and let himself become this...this _thing_. It was mind-numbing and beyond comprehension, and then he was gone. Crushing the heart in his hand, the arteries were bursting and spilling and splattering and it was all over him. He was tainted-mouth, hands, face, eyes stained in red. It would never come off. And if he ever managed to re-surface from his demonic haze and breathe in that moment of human clarity again, he’d never forgive himself.

Then there was light.

First, it was blinding. All-encompassing. He lost sense of self, of everything around him. He didn’t know where he was, what was happening, or if he should care. His consciousness was barely there, but he wasn’t fighting to stay awake. Instead of trying to be aware, he let the light surround him. Then, it was cleansing. It hurt, but not like the torture he’d been through or given. Instead, it was like he’d grown extra layers of burnt and charred skin like calluses, and the light was burning that all away, stripping him down to his essence. Tearing away the monstrosities he’d grown-scales, claws, horns-the light reduced him to his raw, vulnerable skin. And surprisingly, when it was all peeled away, he was pure. No, the light was pure, and by exposure, from its grace and embrace, so was he. Suddenly, the sensation of rising overcame him. He was flying, he was falling. He was alive and dead, and everything in the universe lay before him. Constellations and planets, rainforests and deserts, dark and light matter, breath and touch. Bursting through his senses, the light exploded, seeping into his consciousness.

And there was nothing.

Castiel Novak lived again on the 1st of September, 2008. He had been dead-forty years-three months. With a burst of breath and an expansion of lungs, he was awake and breathing musty, and extremely limited air. It was pitch-black, he was in a closed space, and he was trying, with great difficulty, not to panic. Castiel didn’t know where he was, he couldn’t remember much through the pounding of his heart, and he didn’t know why the fact that his heart was pounding at all was so novel and surprising. Forcing his breathing pattern to level out, he fumbled in his jeans for his lighter, and with raw relief thanked anything and everything that it was actually there. Tremors shook his hands, but he bit his lip and forced them to cooperate long enough to flick the lighter into creating a small flame. However, the light did nothing to assuage his mounting terror. He was in a coffin, wood frame above him, boxing him in, and cutting him off. Very suddenly, he couldn’t breathe, his whole body was trembling, and he needed to get out, get out, _get out_. In a flash of memory, his mother stood over him, shutting a heavy, wooden lid and saying, _“How will you be able to escape if you never practice?”_

And he was shouting over the sound of her ramming down nails, _“But what if this never happens to me?”_

_“It’s happened before to other hunters, and that’s enough of a reason for you to learn.”_

He was being lowered, the sound of dirt hitting wood thudded above him, and he heard his mother say, _“Don’t worry, I’m not even burying you that deep.”_

Pulled back into the present, he restrained his limbs from kicking and punching wildly, and, after bracing himself, reached up. The worst part had always been the moment when the top broke, and the dirt fell. It cascaded down, like a waterfall of shadows and sediment, and suffocated him, pushing against his nose, his eyes, his mouth. Then, he was scrambling, pushing, digging up, and up, he couldn’t think, he couldn’t breathe, and he was going to die here without air, no one was going to reach him, he’d die and go back to hell-his arm broke the surface, followed shortly by his head. Scrambling and clawing, he struggled out of his grave and into afternoon sunlight. Once his body was free, he stood shakily, breathing large clumps of air. His body still shook, but he was free, there was nothing pinning him down. Tilting his head up, he relished in the feeling of sunlight and wide-open spaces. Until he remembered. Light. Screaming. Blood. Before that, death. Before that, a promise of death. Shuddering, he allowed himself one minute to process everything. Counting in his head, at 10, he thought about his mother, by 15, he’d absorbed and pushed aside his claustrophobia. When he hit 20, his head took him to Hell, torture, and Alastair. At 49, he decided he couldn’t tell anything about what he’d done and who he was to Gabriel. Making it to 50, he remembered Gabriel.

“Dammit,” he croaked at 51.

By 55 he was already shoving away his problems and assessing the area. He noticed the abundance of overturned and uprooted trees at 60. Bewildered, Castiel spared the trees several seconds to occupy his thoughts, but he had a lot to do, and gaping at strange forest phenomena was not one of them. Though normally he’d spend hours examining the scene and muttering about the possible reasons for the whole thing, with Gabriel annoyingly pestering him and complaining that he was looking way too much into it, Castiel couldn’t really find it in him to care. Moving his feet, and feeling like he’d just been put back in his body, he stumbled away from his grave.

*

He shouldn’t have been surprised when he finally found Gabriel. After two days of blundering around, realizing he’d been buried just outside the limits of the city he’d died in, reassuring that middle-aged woman that he was not going to rob her and he just had a sore throat and could he just use her cell phone please?, getting Gabriel’s voicemail eight times, and hot-wiring a car (he still felt guilty about that), he’d managed to track his brother down through the phone company of all things. And of course his brother was in Vegas. _Of course_. He continually reined in his mounting annoyance with his flamboyant older brother when he found out his location, after he finally arrived at the...hotel… Gabriel was currently staying at, and when he knocked on the door and heard, “Hang tight, ladies and gentleman, that’d be the delivery boy. Should I ask him to join in?”

Gabriel’s voice deepened suggestively at the last sentence, and Castiel knew him enough to know exactly what kind of face he was making at that moment, on the other side of the door. He was probably even wiggling his eyebrows, that stupid asshole.

“Whoa-ho-ho, calm down, calm down, there’s enough of me to enjoy when I get back.”

Castiel felt like slamming his head repeatedly against the door and groaning, but, underneath his annoyance, hearing his brother’s voice made him too excited and relieved to move. His breath caught in his throat when the handle twisted, and as the door creaked open, he wasn’t sure if someone was playing a blaringly loud rendition of Beethoven’s 5th symphony with only bongos and drums nearby or if that was his heart-beat. When the door was wide open and the pair of brothers faced each other, the only thing either of them could do was stare. Gabriel, short as ever, gaped at Castiel. Castiel, alive as ever, gaped at Gabriel.

“C-Cassie?” Gabriel gasped at the same time Castiel burst, “What are you wearing?”

“You don’t like it?” Gabriel asked faintly as Castiel stared at his leopard print...underwear? Castiel wasn’t sure.

“We’re doing a thing,” Gabriel’s face was pale, like he was the one who had died, and it looked like he’d been forcibly shut down.

Castiel rolled his eyes, “Yeah, that’s great. Now, what did you do in order to get me back?”

“What?” Gabriel blinked at Castiel.

“I was dead and now I’m alive. You’re my brother and we have a history of sacrificing ourselves for the other’s wellbeing. I’m simply drawing logical conclusions based on a repeated pattern.”

“Yeah, you and your logical conclusions,” Gabriel sounded different now, suspicious. He shuffled out of the way and made room for Castiel, “Why don’t you come in, and I’ll tell you?”

Castiel huffed and shouldered past Gabriel, “As long as I don’t have to witness that thing you were doing.”

“’Course, wouldn’t want my little brother to walk in on anything like that,” Gabriel stated from behind him.

Castiel cast his eyes around the suite, noticed the open bedroom door, and rolled his eyes, “Gabriel, don’t be ridiculous, we both know you have no shame."

When he faced Gabriel again, however, he froze. Feet planted, shoulders squared, and still in his utterly stupid hot pink leopard striped whatever, Gabriel held a gun directly in line with Castiel’s chest.

“Gabriel?” He stammered, holding up his arms cautiously.

“Don’t look at me like that, you bastard,” Gabriel hissed, his shocked demeanor gone, replaced with nothing but cold calculation.

“What?”

“Don’t give me that look while you’re wearing my baby brother’s face, you psycho son of a bitch. Castiel’s dead. Now who are you, what do you want, and why in hell are you parading around in his skin?”

Castiel didn’t know whether to raise his eyebrows or frown. He settled for a calm and neutral expression.

“Gabriel, it’s me, Castiel, your real little brother. I’m not a shape-shifter or a demon or a ghost or anything else,” Castiel tried to take a step forward, but Gabriel jerked his gun at him.

“That’s just what any of those would say,” Gabriel snapped, and before Castiel could see where he got it from, Gabriel splashed the contents of a flask of Holy water all over his face.

When Castiel did nothing but spit it out and wipe his face with the collar of his shirt, Gabriel wasn’t fazed.

“So you’re not a demon,” Gabriel nodded his head to the side. “And I’m not any of the others either, I promise. See?”

Castiel kept his expression open and held up his arm, displaying the silver ring and chain bracelet he sported on his right hand.

“Could be imitation metal.”

“I promise it’s not. If you want, I can cut myself with a silver blade. Or you can do it with your own,” Castiel moved to pull his knife out of his pocket, but Gabriel snapped, “Don’t move.”

Pausing and holding his arms up again in a sign of surrender, Castiel didn’t move as Gabriel inched forward, pulled out a silver knife, and cut Castiel’s forearm in a quick, sharp movement.

“Ow,” Castiel hissed, clutching his left arm as blood beaded in fat, rose-red droplets against his skin, “Where were you keeping all of that?”

“I still don’t buy it. What’s my middle name?”

“Ferdinand. You hate it and never tell anyone.”

Gabriel’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes began to soften.

“Who was my first kiss?”

“I don’t know,” Castiel grumbled, “You make up a new story every time. First it was Susana Bochelli, then it was Boris Svendaiglesmith, and I can’t remember all the others. Their names get weirder the more you come up with.”

“Who was _your_ first kiss?”

Castiel humphed and muttered, “April Danise. She told me she wanted to give me a kiss and I thought she meant chocolate. She made me close my eyes and I held my hands out, but she kissed me instead.”

Gabriel huffed.

“What did you tell me after mom died?”

The question felt like a punch to the gut, and Castiel glared at his brother.

“I said that I couldn’t find it in me to miss her, and that there had to be something wrong with me to feel like that.”

Gabriel blinked, dazed, and lowered his gun. “Cassie?”

This time, tears filled his brother’s eyes like contact film, and Castiel sighed.

“Yes, Gabe, it’s me,” and suddenly, everything hit him. He’d been moving and running from what was behind him and fueled himself forward with the aggravation that Gabriel had made a stupid deal to bring him back, but now, his reality sunk in, and tears spilled out of his eyes. Gabe discarded the gun with a dangerous disregard that Castiel would have scolded him for if he could speak without letting out a sob, and wrapped him in a comforting and desperate hug. For a moment, Gabriel held Castiel, and the world felt okay again. Castiel had always run to his big brother when he was younger, and Gabriel’s hugs never ceased to make him feel protected. It was something that had become a law of nature in Castiel’s mind as he grew up. The Earth revolved around the sun, objects fell down, and Gabriel’s hugs would always keep him safe. Except, Gabriel had been holding him when he died. Castiel had been to Hell, and he knew now, he’d never truly be safe. In this moment, the hug was only reassuring because of nostalgia, because it was his _big brother_ , who’d scared off his elementary school bullies and brushed his hair from his face when he was sick and held him close after the first time he’d killed a monster. Closing his eyes, Castiel let two more tears track down his face before he gulped and pulled himself together.

“Okay Gabe, you can let go,” he said, wiping his eyes.

“No I can’t. Big brother rule, I get to stay like this as long as I want. You’re just gonna have to deal with me glued to your side for the rest of your life. I’m sure your future spouse will love it. We can be a threesome.”

“ _Gabe_ ,” Castiel grunted, “You’re still wearing...whatever those are. I think this is enough hugging.”

“I’m disappointed in you, Castiel. You should know there’s no such thing.”

“Gabriel.”

“Nope.”

“Come ooonnn.”

“Nuh uh. This is your punishment for dying for me. Again.”

“I think I’ve been punished enough, now let go,” Castiel forcibly removed his older brother from his body, but couldn’t hide the smile that stretched across his face.

“Aww, see, you love me!” Gabriel teased.

“Yes, I do. Now can you put some clothes on?”

“Gaaabriel, what’s taking so looong? Are you doing something naughty with the delivery boy?” A girl with puffy curls and cheetah patterned underwear called from where she stood in the bedroom doorway.

Gabriel laughed awkwardly, “No, haha, turns out he’s my long lost hermano! Who knew?”

Two more people appeared in the doorway, curiosity and excitement on their faces.

“Oooohh he’s cuuute,” said a girl in tiger stripes.

“I thought hermanos don’t like being around people,” said a dude with a deep voice and a dumb face.

“Does that mean he can’t join in?” said the girl with puffy hair.

Castiel felt like dying again.

“Nope, sorry, I draw the line at my baby brother,” Gabriel explained at the same time that the girl in tiger stripes told the guy, “That’s a _hermit_.”

“I thought that was a lobster,” puffy haired girl commented.

“No, you’re thinking of crabs,” Tiger stripes replied, clearly the smartest of the three.

“I’m not thinking of crabs,” the guy frowned.

“I can tell you what _I’m_ thinking,” Tiger stripes turned back to Castiel and gave him an appraising look.

Castiel looked imploringly at Gabe. Gabriel looked far too amused to do anything about it. Suddenly, the doorway trio were somehow much closer than they should have been in that short amount of time, and the puffy haired girl looked between the two of them.

“You don’t look like brothers,” She noted.

“Different dads, same deranged mother,” Gabriel shrugged.

Tiger stripes got closer to Castiel and smiled demurely, “I can see who got all the good looks.”

The puffy haired girl nodded, and the guy looked like he was still not thinking about crabs.

“Okaaay, clearly your judgement is skewed, and it’s time for you all to go,” Gabriel shooed.

After several whirlwind moments of the three of them protesting, Gabriel shoving their clothes at them while adamantly insisting that he was _much_ more attractive than Castiel, Castiel trying his hardest to avoid them all, the puffy haired girl pouting because she had been looking forward to _whatever_ they had been about to do, and Tiger stripes flirting and blowing Castiel kisses, they finally got wrangled and shoved out. As Gabriel closed the door, Castiel heard the guy calling back to him, “I hope you’re adjusting well to people!”

Once they were well and truly gone, Gabriel sighed and theatrically slumped against the door.

“I like it when they’re a handful, but boy were they a handful,” he shook his head, then seemed to remember something and moaned, “Now I won’t get to see Corina’s tattoo.” Castiel tried not to roll his eyes. He didn’t try very hard.

“What a great loss,” he deadpanned.

“Don’t give me that look, Cassie. You were gone, and I could hardly contain my grief. So of course I came here and this is how I’ve been coping.”

“So, does that mean that you didn’t make a stupid deal to get me back?” Castiel frowned, eyeing him.

“Of course not, dumbass. Why would I do that? You literally did that a year ago and I learned my lesson plain and simple on trading places. No siree, no thank you. Besides, if we keep switching spots for all eternity, that’s the dumbest way to go ever. Don’t get me wrong, I missed you like hell on a hot pocket, but I accepted that you were dead.”

Castiel stood still, absorbing the information. “So, if you didn’t save me, who did?”

“That, little bro, is a million dollar question. How’d you get here?”

“I’ll tell you if you put some clothes on,” Castiel grumped.

Gabriel rolled his eyes and ducked into the bedroom, not bothering to shut the door as he reached for a pile of clothes on the floor. Setting his attention on the somewhat non-existent kitchen (1 microwave, 1 sink, 2 candy bars in the sink, for some reason), Castiel sighed. “I don’t suppose you have any food?”

“Well, you were supposed to be the delivery boy,” Gabriel called, and groaning, Castiel scooped up the candy bars and got to work.

“I thought you hated _Three Musketeers_ ,” Gabriel noted from the doorway, this time garbed from the waist down, shirt bunched in his hands.

Ash on his tongue, smoke down his throat. _Don’t think about it._

“Being dead does wonders to your taste buds,” Castiel offered, focusing on the taste of nougat blended with chocolate, and wondered why he’d ever hated it in the first place. It tasted a whole hell of a lot better than blood. _I said don’t think about it._

“Sheesh, I gotta deal with dead jokes now too?” Gabriel grumbled, pulling his arms through his pink palm tree printed button-up.

“I get to make them now, so yes.”

“Speaking of which, what was that like?” Gabriel buttoned his shirt methodically, and Castiel fixated on the movement.

A pinch of soft fabric between fingers, the pull of plastic through perfectly sized hole, up and on. The action was familiar yet distant, and nostalgia resonated through Castiel like water disturbed by a pebble, noticeable but not disruptive.

“I don’t remember.”

It’s easier this way, he assured himself.

“Oh really? No shit, you’d think Hell would be more memorable,” Gabriel remarked, flopping with a flourish on the stiff, only-comfortable-if-you-think-about-it couch that every hotel seemed to have.

“Guess not. Whatever pulled me out must have erased those events from my amygdala.”

Gabriel huffed, his face morphing into an expression that could only be an attempt at disguising his affection with annoyance.

“Right, your _amygdala_. I’m sorry, I think I misheard you, my cornea’s been giving me trouble recently.”

A small smirk quirked at Castiel’s lips. “Your cornea is in your eye, you ass.”

“My ass is right, have you seen how nice it is? I’d wiggle it if I wasn’t sitting down,” Gabriel grinned the grin of both an older brother who knows he’s being annoying, and someone who is not only vain, but thinks they’re hilarious for bringing up their physical qualities at any opportunity. He wiggled his ass anyway.

Unwarranted tears welled up within Castiel, because Gabriel was being _Gabriel_ , instead of slowly tearing into his skin and wearing two black _nothings_ for eyes.

He settled for a scowl and topic change. “What happened after I died? With Lilith? And Ruby? We were about to summon her when I got shot, did you go through with it?”

Gabriel looked uneasy, which meant that it was his turn to dance around talking about a sensitive subject.

“I, uh, did. I couldn’t really think straight through the whole, y’know, dying thing. So I summoned her because I didn’t think I could take Lilith out on my own, and she said that the Queen of the Wazoos had just...disappeared. Nothing on Demon 5 o’clock News, or whatever they use to find out where each other is, and so, I buried you instead of going after her.”

After a beat, Gabriel’s face paled.

“Oh God, I buried you. I would have cremated you if I could think, but um, I didn’t think you were coming back.”

Castiel closed his eyes in order to try not to think about the disorienting, choking pressure of the darkness of the coffin, and instead got flashes of fire and brimstone for his efforts.

“That was careless, Gabriel. I could have returned as a vengeful spirit.”

“Yeah, and I’d’ve known just what to do with you if you did,” Gabriel mimicked lighting a match and dropping it.

“What about Ruby? What happened to her?” Gabriel looked him dead in the eye and replied, “Killed her, took her knife. Win win if you ask me.”

Castiel nodded.

“Good, we’ll need that.”

Gabriel paused. “And why would that be?”

There was something in the air, hovering, anticipating. At that moment, Castiel became cognizant of cracks in the glass wall that was their relationship, and he wondered how long it would take before it all shattered, and thousands of gallons of water rained down over their heads.

“We’re going after Lilith. And all the other demons, you know, the ones we released from Hell.”

They both knew the _we_ was meant to be _you_.

“And, there is the fact that I was dead, and now I’m not, and whatever pulled me out has to be incredibly powerful. The site of my grave was...decimated. I’m sure we’ll be dealing with that soon too.”

Gabriel didn’t look overly excited at the prospect of jumping back into hunting.

“Damn, Cassie. Back from the dead and ready to crack some skulls and beat up evil for the greater good. Don’t you think we deserve a break? Vacation? I mean, I could go for holing up in Monte Carlo for a few dozen centuries.”

“Gabriel. Demons are out there. You’ve seen what they do. We can’t just turn our backs on people who need us,” Castiel snapped back, not nearly patient or alive enough for this kind of discussion.

“Maybe you can be a martyr twenty-four/seven, but I’d like to breathe for a couple days,” Gabriel grumbled.

“You’ve been breathing!” Castiel spread his arms out, gesturing at the hotel room, “You’ve been doing more than that from the looks of things when I got here.”

“I don’t mean for a couple months, I mean for the rest of my goddamn life! I thought you would have wanted me to get out of the business, start over. Live a normal life,” Gabriel was standing now, but the distance between them remained.

Castiel’s voice was cold-ice-caps, glaciers, the rigid blade of their mother’s glare.

“That’s the most stupid argument I’ve ever heard. Especially from you. Normal life doesn’t ‘suit you’, you’ve said so yourself. You don’t want to settle down, you want to have orgies and drink until you can’t remember where or who you are. Don’t use my death as a way to excuse your own choices.”

The complete blankness on Gabriel’s face meant he wasn’t calm, but the polar opposite. In his brandy dyed eyes, wars were raging, fires whipped into tornadoes.

“How long have you been back? Ten minutes? And you’re already on my back. Give me a break, Castiel. Not everyone can be a heaven sanctioned angel sent from God to save the world from damnation.”

Castiel wanted to kill him. In that moment, with anger flooding his veins, instincts bred where humanity didn’t exist and brutality was a form of hello jumped through his muscles, told him to take a knife and _use it_. Directly after that thought, however, Castiel felt sick. He was dizzy, he was vomiting, he was going to die-he was still standing, staring at his brother.

“I’m sorry,” he said. His hands were shaking. Or maybe that was his whole body.

“I just need to sit down.” He sat down.

Gabriel regarded him cautiously.

“I don’t want to fight with you. I hate hunting too.”

On a basic level, that was true. Castiel did hate hunting. He hated the bloody, violent part of it, the lying, the memories, the guilt, the deconstruction of the hunter’s soul and emotions. But he didn’t hate the end results, the saving people. Gabriel hated hunting on a whole different level. Maybe it was because he’d been doing it longer than Castiel. Maybe it was because he’d rather be one of the supernatural creatures they hunted than the one hunting them. Some days, it worried Castiel, how easily Gabriel killed on hunts, off hunts. How little he cared about the people they helped, how envious he looked whenever they came across someone truly powerful. No, it didn’t just worry Castiel. It _terrified_ him. But today, tonight, he couldn’t find enough caring in him to scrape up some feeling on the subject. So, he just leaned on his chair and let his bones creak, let his face fall into his hands.

“We still have to figure out why and how you’re here,” Gabe fell back onto the couch, but this time, it wasn’t a dramatic flare, it was an exhausted collapse. Castiel didn’t miss the olive branch his brother was extending to him.

“Whatever it is, it’s powerful.”

“So you’ve said,” he almost sounded bored.

They sat in swallowing silence.

Someone knocked on the door.

When Castiel raised his head in an unspoken question, Gabriel simply shrugged and offered, “Delivery boy.”

*

That night, looking in the bathroom mirror, overhead fluorescent lights pale and creating shadows where they had no reason to be, Castiel found the mark. The burn, the scar, whatever it was, sent tendrils of both foreboding and uncertainty coursing through him. A hand, stretched across his bicep as if someone had...grabbed and _pulled_. Castiel thought of the sense of rising he’d felt. The memory was hazy and doused in layers of light and doubt, but he remembered a feeling of almost flying. He didn’t know how to make sense of anything, but as he stared at the red mark, he found he didn’t care very much. It was odd, he should have been curious, frightened, frantic. Instead, he only looked at it and felt like there was a lot of everything out there, and it all had something to do with him, and the whole prospect of dealing with it felt both impossible and tiring. Shaking his head, he gave the mark one last cursory glance, let his sleeve fall, and turned off the light.

*

And there was screaming. Shrieking, tearing, shredding his ears, driving him mad. He was convulsing, clutching his ears. The screams were his, the shrieking was not. Glass shattered, lightbulbs ruptured, the world was vibrating at the highest decimal, sharpest frequency. Or maybe that was just him. He didn’t know, he didn’t know. Blood in his ears, blood on his hands, blood on his tongue. His eardrums were going to explode, he was never going to hear again. He couldn’t take it, make it stop.

It stopped.

*

Jody tried to kill him when they showed up on her doorstep. She’d had experience with a shifter taking the form of her biological son, so someone- an alive someone- with the face of her practically adopted, very dead, one made her lose all coherent thought. Her face morphed to murderous in less than two seconds, he was on his back in less than ten, and there was a gun pressed against his forehead in less than eleven. After the usual ritual of silver-blade cutting, holy water splashing, and interrogating, she hadn’t even apologized, just grabbed him and hugged until he saw spots. But it was good, more than that, to feel her touch, forgiving, loving, unproblematic. When he breathed in the scent of her, men’s deodorant at odds with vanilla shampoo and that inexplicable aroma of just _Jody_ , he thought, _this is what having a real mother is like._ It was hard to accept her love, though, harder still to see her adoring, proud look, at just him being alive. When they got down to business, it was much easier to be here, with the two people he loved most, knew most. Castiel repeated the same lie he’d given to Gabriel about not remembering Hell to Jody, but she believed him much less. Being a living lie detector probably came with being a mom, though Castiel wasn’t about to acknowledge anything.

After they relayed all of the facts about Castiel’s resurrection, from the unfortunate deforestation of his gravesite to the hotel room destroying shrieking, Jody leaned back, and let out a soft, slow whistle.

“Damn.”

Gabriel and Castiel strongly agreed.

“Damn,” Jody repeated again, “You boys have really got yourselves in deep this time. I don’t know what to tell you.”

“How about, ‘Oh gee, that sounds like something I came across fifty years ago, it was easy peasy, some friendly old snuggle monster,’” Gabriel offered.

“Snuggle monster?” Castiel arched his eyebrows at the same time that Jody spluttered, “ _Fifty??_ ”

“You get what I mean,” Gabriel waved his hand dismissively, but Jody crossed her arms, decidedly not letting it go.

“How old do you think I am?”

Castiel experienced second-hand intimidation from the negative waves that emanated from Jody’s face and hurtled toward Gabriel.

“Twenty-four?” Gabriel’s voice lilted, eyes wide in his best imitation of innocence.

Jody glared at him for a minute before sighing and shaking her head, “You boys hungry? We’ll need brainpower to figure this one out, and I can’t have you running on empty.”

Relieved, Gabriel visibly decompressed, “We could use some food, yeah.”

Jody nodded with an amused smile twisting her lips, and the exchange was over.

As his brother and mother-figure made their way to the kitchen, Jody light-heartedly teasing Gabriel for his fashion sense and Gabriel making scandalized and overexaggerated protests, Castiel found that he couldn’t move. Not in an ugent, debilitating sense, as if someone had poisoned him, but more in a contemplative, absent-minded way. His brain was working, his body was not. He was struck, dimly, that it had been forty years since he’d seen them, and that, impossibly, paradoxically, he was the oldest one there. Twenty-four when he’d died, sixty-four when he lived again. One could argue that he was still twenty-four, his body certainly still was. But his soul felt old, older than age could really ever count. It seemed to him, as if he’d lived and died a thousand times, as if he’d seen empires rise and fall, the creation and destruction of the world, every possible outcome of a life, and found it all lacking. Meaningless. What was the point of breathing, of taking a step forward, of loving and living and laughing, when at the end of it all, was.. _.there?_ Castiel didn’t know, maybe didn’t even care. He peered at the pair of them, like he was looking under a looking-glass or portal to another world, and marveled at their ability to more without this crushing burden of purpose, knowledge, and guilt. He felt so heavy and grotesque, a human gutted, turned into a monster, and shoved back into his own skin. This couldn’t be real, it had to be a hallucination, a dream, a strange, horrible new form of torture. They weren’t real. Or, was he not real? The looking glass and his lungs were fracturing. Air came in stilted breaths through his lips, and on the tip of his tongue was the mantra, _you thing, you murderer, monster, monster, monster_. He was old and dead, young and alive, he belonged with his family, he didn’t deserve his family.

“Cassie? You good over there?” Gabe’s voice punctured the spiralling dismay of his thoughts, and Castiel could move again.

The paralysis vanished as quickly as it had spread over his body, and now, he just had to conquer the task of pretending it had never been there in the first place.

*

They sought out a psychic. There was a séance, a phrase ripped from a mouth, and burnt flesh. Eyes: gone, hands: scrabbling, tearing, clutching. She screamed in heaving, panic induced sobs _“My eyes, oh god, my eyes”_ , and Castiel vomited in his mouth. No one noticed. The only benefit, if it could even be called that when there was a woman with two empty, charred crevices as eyes out there, because of them, was the words she screamed before it happened.

_The Angel, the angel._

*

The night was sharp, the dawn of fall. It was frigid, chilling Castiel through his leather jacket, but aromatic in a way that was distinctly nostalgic. He could smell summer behind him, cut grass after rain, fireflies against a dark sky, but also autumn stretching before him, wind rustling leaves, a crisp harvest moon hanging in the sky like a warning. Humming around him, above him, the very molecules of the air sparked with an electric foreboding, a promise. Something was going to happen tonight. He just wasn’t sure if it was a good thing. In two different places, two brothers prepared for their destiny unknowingly. Castiel waited with Jody, eyes alert, body stiff, for his future in an abandoned warehouse, and Gabriel-desperate, _hungry_ Gabriel- was out seizing his. Light from a distant and condescending moon filtered down from a hole in the ceiling above Castiel and reflected and refracted in the scattered shards of a broken window nearby. Jody twirled a knife on her fingertips like a magician rolling a quarter, Castiel examined the symbols and sigils on the wall, and silence rained on their heads like shooting stars. Or perhaps, it was not silence, but the presence of unspoken words. Jody switched her knife to her left hand. Castiel counted to five hundred for the fifth time. Nothing. Nothing. They both itched to ask filling questions, ones that held no meaning but would dissipate this weary unspokenness, but they both knew the answers to the empty questions, _“are you sure we did it right?”_ , _“maybe it’s because angels aren’t real?”_ , and the broad, messy questions ( _“so, death?”_ ) were too consuming for what they were doing. So they waited. And waited. Jody inspected her gun, Castiel found constellations in the reflected moonlight.

 _What are we doing here?_ Castiel let himself wonder. This was pointless, nothing was going to happen. It was ridiculous that they were even here-Angels weren’t real. They simply weren’t, and if anything, the empty and swollen silence of the warehouse was example enough.

Except, it wasn’t so silent anymore. The wind had picked up, whistling through the splintered walls and sending the temperature plummeting. Loose boards shuttered. It was normal, just some midnight gale. Until it wasn’t. The crackling electricity in the air wasn’t a promise anymore, it was lightning, it was now. There was roaring, convulsing. A tempest ripped above and through the warehouse, shattering intact windows, scattering debris and sucking them out into the night. Castiel was in the middle of a thunder-storm without rain, a hurricane without an eye, a blizzard without snow.

Energy, air, the very reality of the room swirled in a vortex, and in its center, just feet from Castiel, stood a man. It was rapid, unforeseen, mind-bending, him just being there, when seconds ago there had been nothing. And just like that, the wind died, the temperature leveled off, and it was just Castiel, Jody, this man who had just apparated into the middle of the room like it was a normal method of transportation. For a moment, they stared at each other.

The potentially threatening and definitely dangerous man, who had created a storm in one room just to make an entrance, wore nothing but the simple, flimsy fabric of a hospital gown. In the dark, Castiel couldn’t distinguish most of his features, but he catalogued the width of the shoulders, the lean frame, the bare feet. A low symphony of crickets chirping filtered in from somewhere out there in the night, and no one moved.

Then, Jody shot him. Twice. Three times. He frowned at the bullet holes in his chest, like he had been expecting a warmer welcome, but still remained motionless. Jarred into action by Jody’s shots, Castiel lurched forward, demon killing blade in his hand glinting and arching, lightning contained. Even though everything about this situation felt off, from the man’s pout-like frown to his immobility, Castiel stabbed his stomach, expecting the jerk and internal explosion of the death of a demon. But nothing of the sort happened. In fact, absolutely nothing at all resulted from the injection of the ancient blade through his flesh. Except, that is, for the man touching his fingers to the hilt of the knife like it was fragile, and offering Castiel a faint smile.

“What?” Castiel rasped.

Jody motioned to shoot him again, but the man turned his head, regarded her, and, as if reality had glitched, stood next to her without having moved. He tapped two fingers to her forehead and eased her to the floor, and then he was back, standing so close to Castiel that he could distinguish dozens of freckles sprinkled across his face like scattered dust.

“What the hell?” Castiel stumbled, jerking away from him and rushing to Jody’s crumpled body. Skidding to his knees, he cradled her head and checked for a pulse.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t hurt her,” the man was standing above them, having crossed the distance without actually moving his body again, “She’s just asleep.”

The fact that she was still alive only relieved Castiel for a second.

“Who are you?” He demanded, rising to his feet and facing the...thing before him. “What are you?”

Moonlight cast half of the man’s face in shadow.

“Those are two very different questions,” he remarked, scrubbing his chin. The action was strange, not because it gave the appearance that the man didn’t know who or what he was, but because it was executed like a borrowed habit. Not even that, an imitation. A child parodying their parent without instruction or understanding.

“I suppose the easiest way to answer is simply this: I’m an Angel.”

“An Angel,” Castiel repeated, skepticism dripping off his tongue like acid, “Where’s your harp and halo?”

The self-proclaimed Angel narrowed his eyes, then shrugged. The action was meant to be nonchalant, flippant, natural. But on him, it looked stiff, unpracticed.

“I don’t really have either of those. Modern media gets so much of us wrong. Although it’s understandable that they might get the halo from how bright our natural forms are,” he sighed, it was unsettling. Like an alien, big green head and all, trying to give someone a fistbump.

“They just don’t ever portray us as very badass, I mean, come on, I bet you’d be expecting something like a freaking cherub with chubby cheeks and dinky little wings, right? I mean, I’m way more awesome than that.”

Maybe Castiel was still dead. Maybe this was just a really weird, very detailed dream.

“Oh, I do have wings though! And they’re not any of that tiny, chicken shit either,” the “Angel” was straightening, and seemed very proud to be stating this fact.

“I mean, these suckers are like sixteen feet long each.” The way he said it made it sound like that was quite an impressive length among Angel circles.

“Oh, I bet you wanna see ‘em. C’mon, I know you do,” the Angel was much too excited for this whole situation. Castiel felt like punching himself in order to see if any of his surroundings would change.

“That’s a yes, right?” The Angel asked.

Castiel didn’t know if he should agree or not, but there was still a part of him that didn’t believe, couldn’t believe that this thing was what it said it was. So, he nodded. It was barely even a tilt of the head, but the Angel took for what it was, and in a sense, unfurled his wings. Thunder rumbled and lightning cracked, and the room narrowed to one point, the radiant, glowing angel, with his eyes and aura shining with ethereal, silver light. It was starlight, it was diamonds spun into air, it was perfection embodied, complete and utter magic. It was blinding, cleansing. Pure. Behind the Angel, cast in rippling and awe-striking shadows, stretched out two magnificent, impossible wings. A faint feeling of flying flitted through Castiel’s memory. The wings disappeared, along with the Angel’s glowing aura, but he could still see their imprint, still feel their impact. Emotions and realizations flooded and effectively paralyzed him, and he stared at the wonderful, terrifying, reality-defying creature facing him. He knew that light, he recognized it. No, more than that. He resonated with it, as if it were intertwined through his muscles and bones and down his core, as if it had touched and known his soul.

“Who...are you,” the words trembled. Or maybe that was Castiel.

The Angel gave him a bittersweet smile, all trace of his formerly light-hearted persona discarded, “I’m the one who unbound you from eternal damnation. I pulled you from Hell, I remade your vessel, wove your soul back into it.”

He didn’t want to believe it. Angels weren’t real, they couldn’t be. But, there one was. And Castiel knew, understood, recognized him.

“That can’t be true. Angels...are good. They don’t just blind people,” he could still smell her burnt flesh, her desolate screams.

“I...regret that. It was unfortunate. She attempted to see my true form. There are very few who can.”

Castiel scowled, squinting and gesturing to the Angel’s body, “So what’s that then?”

“The reason I was so late,” the Angel replied, “Because you cannot see my true form or understand my real voice, I needed a vessel. I’m borrowing his body. He was dying, I offered to save him in exchange.”

“Your real voice?” Realization dawned on him. “The screaming.”

“You didn’t seem to take it very well.”

“No, shit,” Castiel reverted to sarcasm, his best line of both defense and aggression, “Really, who are you?”

“I _told_ you,” the Angel sounded almost frustrated, “I saved you.”

“Yeah, and why would you do that?” The question surprised the Angel, but Castiel needed to know.

“What do you mean why?” The Angel stood much closer now, stars made kaleidoscopes of his eyes.

“Why me?”

“Why...you? Why not you?” Castiel looked at him like he already knew the answer to that. The Angel merely frowned.

“You don’t think you should have been raised from perdition? But, Heaven has plans for you. It couldn’t have been anyone else.”

“Heaven?” Castiel croaked. Of course, if one Angel existed, why not a whole host?

“Of course. You are integral to the future of the world, Castiel. You are the Righteous Man.”

Castiel inhaled a tumultuous breath. The Angel regarded the action curiously, flicking his gaze down to Castiel’s shuddering chest and back to his lips. Then he breathed. The fact that he hadn’t been before was now painfully and terrifyingly obvious.

“The Righteous Man?” Castiel felt like the end of a horrible Cosmic joke. Maybe he was the pun that God pulled out at all the Christmas parties, the one that left all the Heavenly hosts grumbling. He puffed out a fragile, self deprecating laugh. “Me?”

The Angel frowned again. “Of course you. Why don’t you believe that it would be you?”

Castiel didn’t answer, but apparently, he didn’t need to. The Angel shook his head, and the gesture was distinctly more human than all the others had been. Castiel didn’t know whether to be impressed at how quickly he was learning, or petrified by it.

“You don’t think you’re worthy. You don’t think you deserve to be called ‘Righteous’.”

Castiel said nothing, but something within him shattered and knit back together at being so well known. The Angel searched Castiel’s eyes like he was scrying to the soul beneath the surface, his eyes ages older than the young face he wore.

Castiel felt as if there was nothing beneath him, he was just standing on a void of emptiness, waiting to drop.

The Angel’s gaze did not waver. “Heaven has great plans for you, Castiel, remember that.”


	2. A Demon, an Angel, and a lot of Lying

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!! I present to you chapter two. The events of this chapter mainly revolve around the time period of the end of Lazarus Rising through to the end of Are You There God? It's Me, Dean Winchester. While working on this, I realized a couple minor issues that I quickly edited. Originally, I wrote that Castiel was 30, when in actuality he's 24 at this point in the timeline. I had wanted to make him Dean's age, but I realized that wouldn't work, so Gabriel is 29 and Castiel is 24 (because for some reason I wanted Castiel's birthday to be in December). Also, I changed Ruby. I'm sorry if you like the show's portrayal of her, but I felt like since in the show, she possessed someone that would make Sam happy, as well as acted in the best way possible in order to slowly manipulate him into following her, I figured she'd treat Gabriel a completely different way. I also hope you don't mind that in the future, I'll probably change the looks or personalities of some minor characters (Anna for example). It's not that I don't like the show's interpretation of them, it's just that the adjustments sort of came to me and felt right for this version of the story. Also, warning for some language and brief mentions of past child abuse/neglect.

There was blood in his body, pumping hot under his skin, that wasn’t his. He could feel the difference, how it was just a sick, perverted imitation of real blood, human blood. It might as well have been smoke, the way it didn’t belong in his body. But, damn, did it feel good. Gabriel couldn’t remember a time when he felt so powerful and in control. For years, he was alone with his mother, a soldier in a child’s body. A mindless drone was what she wanted, sculpted for war and revenge and obedience. Gabriel always thought it was all ridiculously ironic, how her life had been ruined, so she, in an attempt to avenge herself, made sure to ruin his before he got a running start. There was the constant vigilance mantra that she drilled into his skull, sometimes literally, the long stretches of time when he was tossed aside and dumped at Jody’s, the learning how to identify signs of a ghost before his ABC’s, and the inbred violence and isolation. As he got older, she’d leave him for long stretches of time, and he’d learn to hate being alone, but hate the thought of his mother returning even more. God, he hated his mother, and he loved her, and he hated her more for the fact that he loved her. She was a manipulative psycho bitch, but sometimes, she’d look at him, and give him the soft, half moon smile that had skipped him and went right to Castiel, and he would feel his love for her like it was a tangible thing. She’d fling her arm around his shoulders, lean back, and say,  _ You and me, kiddo, you and me, fighting machine.  _ After he’d left, to go drink himself through college, he would lie awake some nights, letting the steady, shuttered breathing of his roommate remind him of that of his mother, and think, distantly, without emotion,  _ That couldn’t have been healthy _ . Then he’d think about the little brother he left to live with her alone, and find the nearest bottle of “hey, it looks like alcohol”, and down the whole thing. Though he was free of his past, thousands of miles away from his crazed mother and tiny brother, guilt ruled him. With the pain radiating in his chest, it felt like he was existing, not living. Far from the unburdened and carefree version of himself that he wanted to be. He tried, so hard, with school, work, relationships, but control was an apparition. The closer he got to it, the more he knew it wasn’t real. It didn’t matter that he had a job he liked, a girlfriend, a life. Because there was still that sense, that this wasn’t his, it didn’t belong to him. He felt as if he was living in between chapters of a book, in the segment that the author skipped over. Nothing about it was important, it would pass anyway. His job wouldn’t last. His life wasn’t his. The girl he held every night, Hayley, with her soft smiles and gemstone eyes, she wasn’t permanent, no matter how badly he wanted her to be. And the harder he tried to hold onto her, the more she slipped away, until she had extricated herself from his life completely. Then, his little brother, the one he’d left behind, just stumbled back into his life, and didn’t even remotely seem to hate him.  _ I didn’t know who else to come to,  _ he’d admitted, and god, Castiel was so young. Gabriel couldn’t say no, and even if he'd been able to ignore the desperation in Castiel's eyes, he had nothing to stay for. So, his life was in the hands of fate, stupid visions, his mother, and all that shit. But, after that, Azazel was dead, and so was his mother, and so was he. Unfortunately, instead of leaving it alone and just letting Gabriel stay dead, stupid, self-sacrificing Castiel made a deal, and not long after that, he was dead. All of this, and Gabriel had no choice, no say. He’d just been an observer, really, watching the events of his life unfold as he sat, static. Not anymore. For the first time, when he made a choice, when he wanted something to happen, it happened. Destiny was his bitch now. A faint smirk twitched at Gabriel’s lips at the thought, and he stretched out his hand. The smoke of the demon’s essence jerked up and out of the waitress's body like vomit,  _ at his will _ , and it felt good, it felt right. As the black, ash-like substance of the demon’s warped soul pooled at the woman’s feet, Gabriel knew Ruby was behind him, could sense her, but he kept going, exorcising the demon until there was just the husk of the possessed left. The woman was dead. Oh well. Greater good, y’know?

“Impressive,” Ruby crossed her arms, leather jacket stretched taut around her shoulders. “Been practicing?”

“You could say that,” Gabriel replied airily, eyeing her. She looked beautiful, deadly. Then again, she always did. Neon light from the diner’s sign illuminated her like a stained glass painting, accentuating her lipstick, red as war, and drawing attention to the tattoo of vines and roses that curled up her dark skin and entwined at the base of her neck. 

“I’m surprised to see you,” she popped an eyebrow, but for all intents and purposes, did not look remotely surprised, “Thought since baby brother’s back in town, you’d skip out on all of this.”

Gabriel shrugged, “Ah, he doesn’t have to know just yet.”

For someone who had mastered facial expressions and manipulation, she still didn’t look shocked. 

“Your reunion seemed pretty touching to me, thought all those feelings of goodwill would have you staying away. You know, straight and narrow,” she commented, leaning against one of the booth’s table. 

“You didn’t see the whole thing,” Gabriel expressed, shaking out his shoulders and yawning, “But I’m not giving this up. And Cassie wouldn’t understand, even if I told him it was to help people.”

“Mm,” Ruby nodded, puffy hair bouncing. They both knew that wasn’t why he was doing this. “Even still, if you want, I could take a step back, let you have your quality bro-time.”

The way she said it was more of a challenge than an actual suggestion.

“Like hell. Castiel doesn’t like you, and I only like you ‘cause I can’t trust you, but I’m still doing this,” Gabriel groused. 

“Oh, good to know that’s the  _ only  _ reason you like me,” she leered, dark eyes glinting, playfully or dangerously, Gabriel couldn’t say. 

Either way, it was pretty hot.

Gabriel gave her a delighted smirk, then decided to change the subject and leave her hanging.

“What’s going on here, Ruby?” he gestured to the corpses of the diner’s staff, their eyes all burnt out, “The psychic, before her face went all crisp marshmallow, said something about an Angel.” 

Ruby shrugged her glorious, glorious shoulders. 

“Don’t know about that, but whatever it is, it’s nothing that I’ve ever seen before.”

“Oh, so you _ don’t _ know it all,” Gabriel taunted. 

“Shut up,” she shot back. After a beat, she added, “Whatever it is, it spells out danger.”

“For me or you?” 

She shrugged again. “Everyone, probably.”

“Oh, goody.”

“Yeah, that,” Ruby pushed off from the table and walked up to him, “I’ll be in touch.”

“I hope so,” Gabriel replied, wiggling his eyebrows. 

She let out a deep, chilling laugh, “You’d make a good demon, Gabriel.”

A year ago, that sentence would have repulsed him. Now…

“Maybe, but I’m better at killing them.”

* * *

So, an Angel it was. Really, Gabriel didn’t have a problem believing it. When you grew up manipulating people into telling you if they’d seen any unusual signs before their husband was found dead upside down in a completely locked room with no weapon in sight, you kinda rolled with the punches. Castiel, on the other hand, remained skeptical. 

“Come on, Gabe, how could it be an Angel?” 

Gabriel shrugged, subconsciously wiping the back of his hand against his lips, as if to wipe away non-existent saliva. Or the lingering feeling of blood.

“You’re the one who saw and kebabbed him, if anything, I’d think you’d be the one who wouldn’t need convincing.”

“But-but...Angels can’t be real.  _ God _ can’t be real.”

Gabriel arched his eyebrows at his little brother and grabbed two beers from Jody’s fridge. It was 4 in the morning. They always seemed to have the most scintillating conversations between “why the hell are we awake” and “go the fuck to sleep” o’clock. 

“Hey, I’m no Mother Mary, but  _ demons  _ are real. Hell is real. It’s not that much of a stretch to assume that the opposite is true.”

“C’mon, Gabe, I thought you were an atheist.” 

Castiel had never been able to logically debate well with Gabriel. Gabriel was born with a silver tongue and the mental cunning and flexibility of a rubber snake. His younger brother, on the other hand, could pose a hell of an argument if he sat down and wrote it out, but between his cumbersome moral convictions and recurring inability to actually eloquently express his thoughts whilst feeling thus mentioned convictions, he was no courtroom lawyer. Gabriel could argue any side of an argument, and leave his opponent not only firmly converted, but also slightly confused as to how they never thought his way in the first place. To Castiel, the height of scandal was arguing for something he didn’t believe in. 

“Eh, more like Egotist.”

Castiel didn’t appreciate the joke, and Gabriel conceded that it wasn’t his best.

Collapsing in the chair across from Castiel, he slid one of the beers across the kitchen table's wood surface.

“Look, Cassie, I don’t know what you want me to say. Angels aren’t real? Because, the way I see it, a guy walks in, doesn’t react to gunshots or Ruby’s knife, uses abilities you’ve never seen before, says he’s an Angel, and then goes all spread eagle on you. That sounds pretty damn convincing.”

Castiel glowered at the rim of his beer bottle. His hands cupped it like it was precious, but he hadn’t taken a single sip. 

“He could be lying. He could be something else.”

“Bitch please, you know very well he wasn’t lying. You’re just stubborn,” Gabriel brought his bottle to his lips, kept his eyes on his little brother, gulped down a mouthful. 

A strand of ink black hair had strayed from the unkept, wind-tunnel tragedy that was Castiel’s everyday hairstyle and draped over his right eye. Gabriel had to restrain the impulse to reach over and sweep it off his forehead. 

Silence elapsed over them like the ghost of a deceased relative. Unwanted and slightly passive aggressive. 

“Maybe he’s a Greek god. Or another trickster,” Castiel offered without lifting his gaze. 

“Jesus Christ,” Gabe rolled his eyes upward as if to ask the god that they were currently debating the existence of,  _ can you believe this shit? _

“Do you really need me to argue the finer points of that or are you smart enough to know it's neither?”

Castiel remained silent. 

“Okay then, for you, my dumbass brother, I will give it my best shot. Numero uno: a trickster would’ve been a hell of a lot flashier. There’d be streamers and a Mariachi band and a banner with  _ U SUCKER  _ sprawled across it in rainbow letters, and maybe even hors d'oeuvres when he finally showed up. Since there was none of that and the most this guy apparently did was complain about the representation of angels in pop culture? My guess is no, it is not our well-acquainted buddy ol’ pal, Monsieur Triquester.”

Gabriel paused to check and see if his brother was paying attention. And maybe for dramatic effect. 

“Numero two-o, if it was a greek god, why the hell would they say they were an ‘Angel of the Lord’? I’m pretty sure all the pagan gods hate Christian lore with a deep rooted passion. There’s no way they’d go around parading to be something they’re not. If it was a pagan god,  _ they’d let you know.  _ Mom and I met Apollo a couple years back, and  _ man,  _ he was a hot piece of ass but had an ego bigger than the eastern-sea board. His ego had an ego. He tried to be all mysterious about his identity, but caved after  _ two minutes.  _ Try again, squirt, because I don’t think you found a plausible enough alternative there,” Gabriel took another swig of his beer. 

“Don’t call me squirt,” Castiel mumbled, and Gabriel grinned. The kid was almost thirty and he still sounded twelve when he said stuff like that. 

“I’ll stop calling you squirt when you lose the cherub cheeks and actually look older than nineteen,” Gabriel smirked. 

Castiel leveled him with his full blast, blue glacier glare, but Gabriel didn’t give any indication that it was unsettling.

So, Castiel didn’t look nineteen. He sure didn’t look twenty-nine either. In all honesty, Gabriel couldn’t really tell how old Castiel looked. His face was young, but it had always been like that. His eyes, though, they’d never been young. Even as a child, they’d been solemn, old. Now, they looked ancient. More than that, they were broken; they missed something, and that absence made them full of a sorrow so potent it could only belong to those who’d lived eons in one day, seen a million things, and traded a piece of themselves in the process.

Gabriel didn’t like that. So, he eyed a carved notch in the table instead. 

_ O.M.  _

Everywhere he looked, he saw ruin.

“Look, Cassie, you can keep coming up with theories and loopholes until you pass out, but I’m exhausted. Do you mind if I actually, you know, go to bed at a normal hour?” He stood and started stretching. The world was heavy, his sins were heavier. 

Castiel squinted at the clock above the sink. 

“It’s almost four thirty.”

“Exactly. If I hurry, I can make my four hours,” Gabriel winked. 

Grumbling, Castiel shook his head and eyed his untouched beer. 

“Go ahead, I’m not tired.”

Gabriel sincerely doubted that. But, when it came to Castiel, he knew when to push an issue and when to wait until another day.

“Yeah, okay. Don’t go to any strip clubs without me.”

That got a huff out of his solemn little brother. When Castiel didn’t look up and Gabriel realized he wasn’t going to, he sighed, rolled his eyes, and made his way to the other end of the table, where he hugged Castiel’s head to his leg and said, “Good night, Smudgy.”

“Don’t call me Smudgy either,” Castiel mumbled back, but his eyes were closed. 

“Sure thing, it’s not like I’ve got, what, fifty more nicknames for you.”

“Let me save both of us some time and say, don’t call me any of them.”

“Fat chance,” Gabriel extracted himself from his brother and tried to swallow the palpable guilt within him. He was lying. 

His life was a lie.

But it was his lie. 

“G’night, kiddo.”

But Castiel didn’t seem to be listening anymore. 

**  
  
**

* * *

**  
  
**

It’s like time hadn’t moved at all, seeing her. She still had that scar slitted in the middle of her upper lip, that freckle under her left eye, the trail of blood stained down her chin. She was just as he remembered her, just as he’d seen in his dreams for fifteen years. There were others after her, ones he cradled as their heartbeats stopped, as their eyes looked beyond his into something he couldn’t see. Ones who died in his arms, because he wasn’t smart enough, strong enough, fast enough. But she was the first. When she was alive, she’d had eyes that looked like they were always reflecting fireworks, an energetic grin full of braces and missing teeth, and lungs that left her heaving after her endless chatter, as if they were a size too small. It didn’t matter how she died, or that he tried to save her. It only mattered that she did, that she never got to go be an astronaut like she wanted, or to look down at the Earth from space and know what it was like to feel big and small at the same time, to see wonder before her and feel cold, because she wasn’t there anymore. 

“I just think I would understand then, seeing everything I’ve ever thought was important thousands of feet below me, what it is that I’m supposed to be here for.”

Castiel remembered the way she said it, arms hugging her knees, head tilted back like she had just let out a soul-sparking laugh, the fireworks in her eyes more like exploding stars. After that, when he stared at the night sky, he’d only seen her looking back. He hadn’t looked,  _ really looked,  _ at the stars in a long time. 

And there she was, a distorted replica of herself. Body, face, voice, all the same. But death had robbed her of the things that really made her, well, alive. 

There were no fireworks when he made eye-contact with her, when he told her he was sorry, when she burned away. Seeing her again, it made him wish, not for the first, or the second, or even the hundredth time, that he’d died in her place. 

* * *

_ The Rising of the Witnesses. Signs. The Apocalypse.  _

It was all she was, a pawn in a bigger game. A life taken, perverted, used to accomplish a goal, destroyed. 

Castiel hated God. He hated Angels. What was the point?

When he was a child, untainted and unburdened, or at least, less so than he was now, he’d sneak into church services on Sunday mornings. It happened sporadically, only when Mom was gone, when Gabriel was so smashed or hungover he couldn’t tell the difference between his brother and a garbage can. He’d wake early, place a glass of water and two Tylenol next to Gabriel’s motel bed, and slip away, just one more shadow in the dawn mist. Making sure to keep silent and still, he’d find perches behind bushes, on roofs, in trees, and watch the churchgoers, complex and simple people, spill out of their cars and into church buildings. Everywhere he went, they were the same. It didn’t matter what city, what state, it seemed to his childish mind that whenever he went, he’d find a direct parallel of someone he’d already seen. There were the pastors and priests who showed up before everyone else, who either walked like they had nothing or everything to hide. Next came the choir, or the worship band, or the Sunday school teachers, devout and excited in a childish sort of innocence that Castiel, a child himself, had never felt he possessed at any point in his life. And then the families. They hurt the most. Castiel would watch them with a burning envy, an acidic bitterness that left him yearning to look away but forced him to watch, as the elementary aged children laughed and chased each other across the parking lot, as the smaller ones bounced on their parents hips and shoulders, as the oldest ones varied from looking like they’d rather turn around or run right in. How Castiel hated them all. How he wanted to be any one of them. After everyone had filtered in, like a thief, he’d lurk in the back and feed on their faith, on their utter devoutness to a deity who he desperately wanted to believe in. When they prayed, he would just watch, soaking in their bowed heads and complete submission. Then, later, when he found himself alone, he’d fold his hands and close his eyes. And hope and pray. Hope that there was someone out there, who could hear him, who cared about him. Pray that they would help him. The last time he’d ever found the words, Gabriel had dropped a match on the gasoline that was his relationship with their mother, and they were yelling, cursing, tearing down Heaven with their rebukes and oaths. And Castiel had listened and, defeated, exhausted, useless, prayed.

_ Help.  _

Gabriel left, and Castiel stopped praying.

In Hell, he stopped believing in divine goodness at all.

Now, after the actual hard part was over, after all three of them had almost died, after  _ her _ , the so-called “ _ Angel  _ of the Lord” finally showed up, just rifling through Jody’s fridge like it was nothing. Wrapped in midnight shadows and a new overcoat, he could have been a nightmare. Castiel was still uncertain that he wasn’t. 

“Nice to see you make it a priority to ensure the safety of someone so important to Heaven’s plans,” Castiel grumbled, subtly shifting into a ready stance. 

The Angel held a yogurt up to the dim, rustic yellow fridge light. 

“Aw, Greek yogurt? That stuff’s shit,” he said, like someone would say about a movie they’d only read the reviews for.

“It’s healthy,” Castiel dismissed, “Why are you here? And why didn’t you help earlier?”

The Angel glared at the yogurt like he could shoot beams into it and shoved it back on its shelf. 

“To tell you good job, with the Witnesses and everything,” he kept rifling through the fridge, “Oh, and there’s an apocalypse coming.” 

Castiel couldn’t breathe for a moment. Then, he was trying to hide his hyperventilation. 

“Right, an apocalypse. That’s what Jody said. And of course you knew about it. A warning would have been welcome.”

“This is it,” The Angel replied, looking slightly put out as he shoved his whole arm into the abyss of refrigerated foods. “Lilith is trying to bust Lucifer out of his nut box.”

“ _ What? _ ” Castiel gritted his teeth and gave the Angel a vaporizing glare. 

Still rooting around in the fridge like this was a goddamn comedy and not dystopian-before-the-dystopia, the Angel grunted. 

“The Rising of the Witnesses, it’s one of the sixty-six seals that keep Lucifer contained. Break ‘em all and poof, you’ve got yourself the real-life Devil ready for mass destruction.”

Head spinning, Castiel didn’t know whether to step forward and grab the lapels of the Angel’s new suit and shake him until he got all the answers, or collapse backwards onto the table. Compromising, he clenched his fists and stood his ground. 

“So, Lucifer’s real? Angels are real?  _ God  _ is real?” 

Castiel’s was the disbelief born from blinding loyalty, stronger and more stubborn than most. 

“Yep, the whole shebang,” The Angel extracted his arm from the fridge, and closed the door, plunging them into an unsettling sort of night, where shadows of light as well as dark warped their surroundings and rippled across their faces. Leaning back, the Angel rubbed his hands together and levelled Castiel with an unyielding look that burned like holy-fire. 

“How-how can I trust you? I don’t even know your name.” 

It was a ridiculous argument, and Castiel knew it. He trusted this Angel in a way he couldn’t explain, he  _ knew  _ that it was the entity before him that pulled him from Hell like he knew breathing kept him alive, and yet. 

They stared at each other, the Angel saying nothing for several heavy seconds, just meeting Castiel’s eyes with impossibly old ones. It was difficult to name, and Castiel almost thought he imagined it, but vieled beneath his peridot irises, there was a sadness, an eagerness, a  _ longing.  _ No one had ever looked at Castiel like that, and he found himself tilting his head, lips parted ever so slightly in his pure uncertainty. 

“You want to know my name? I’d love to tell you, but the mere sounds of the syllables would rip your molecules apart. It’d leave you as particles stretched through the very air you breathe.”

Castiel squinted, and stepped closer to the Angel. He was an ant compared to the cosmic being staring him down, but he also knew what he was trying to do.

“I’m not scared of you,” he stated simply. If the Angel were human, Castiel could have inhaled his scent, he was so close. As it was, his nose stung with the smell of a new suit laundered with mint, but nothing of its wearer. 

“You should be,” The Angel placed a hand on Castiel’s face, gentle and unnerving.

They were both trying to unbalance the other, and Castiel refused to flinch at the Angel’s touch.

His voice was soft, and in that way it was steel, “I’m an Angel of the Lord, I rebuilt your body from scratch, I can tear it back down.”

“But you won’t,” Castiel prodded. He didn’t know when he’d become insane enough to provoke an Angel that could very easily obliviate him, but he’d always had somewhat of a death wish, and he wasn’t about to kiss up to anyone, especially not Heaven’s errand boy. 

“You need me, or at least, Heaven does.”

The Angel lifted his shoulders in another inhuman shrug, and the intensity of the moment shattered. 

“You got me there,” he removed his hand and rested against the counter, all sly smiles and arrogant attitude, like even though Castiel had proven his point and called out the Angel’s power play, he was still the one who’d lost in the exchange.

Frowning, Castiel took a step backwards and regarded the Angel, “So, what am I supposed to call you. _ Angel _ ?” 

The Angel smirked playfully, poking his tongue out between his teeth. The way he did it, for the first time, was practically human. It was off-putting for the fact that it wasn’t. 

“Aw, giving me a pet name already? Buy me dinner first, babe.”

Castiel rolled his eyes with his whole head. 

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Yeah, I know,” he looked disappointed, “Look, let’s see, uh there’s gotta be something you can call me.”

The Angel snapped his fingers and spread his hands wide, “I got it, James Dean.”

“What,” At this point, Castiel didn’t know what he was expecting. 

“Y’know, like  _ Rebel Without a Cause, _ ” The Angel looked altogether too excited at the prospect. 

“I’m not going to call you James Dean.”

Castiel could swear the Angel was pouting, “Well, how ‘bout just Dean then?” 

Dean the Angel. Dimly, Castiel thought that was some sort of commentary on his life, but he couldn’t tell how.

“Sure, fine,” Castiel couldn’t believe they’d wasted so long on the topic of the Angel’s name when there was the fact that the  _ end of the world was coming.  _

“Now that we’ve got that out of the way, would you care to explain why...why _ God _ isn’t doing anything to stop the apocalypse. Or why it's happening in the first place? And what’s so special about  _ me _ ?”

“God  _ is  _ doing something about it, why do you think I’m here?” His words were brash, but there was a look in his eye when he mentioned God that Castiel couldn’t interpret. “Two-thousand years and suddenly Angels are walking around for no reason, come on Castiel, I expected more from you.”

“So God is trying to stop it.”

“Of course! Why would we be involved if he wasn’t?” Dean almost sounded like he was trying to convince himself, “This is the answer to your prayer.”

“ _ My prayer _ ?” 

“You prayed for help, here I am,” Dean shrugged like it was nothing, like what he said meant nothing. 

“You heard my prayers? God heard my prayers?”

“Well,” Dean paused, then scratched the back of his head, like he had to remember to do it, “I heard your prayer, at least. I heard all your prayers.”

There was no way, shape, or form that Castiel could ever have been prepared for that. 

“You heard my prayers and did nothing?” He demanded, furious, exhausted. 

“I-we, we weren’t allowed to do anything before...well, before I pulled you out.”

“Why?” It wasn’t a forgiving question. The word was hard, accusatory. 

Dean’s face emitted an expression that might have been embarrassment if he could express more than three emotions. 

“We just weren’t allowed to, alright? But we’re helping now. That’s why you had to fend for yourselves, by the way. Lilith and her demons are breaking seals left and right, and you three weren’t the only ones affected by the Witnesses. Twenty other hunters died because of it.”

An icicle inched its way to Castiel’s heart. 

“For Angels of God, you’re doing an impressive job at failing,” Castiel remarked, scowling. 

“It’s a war, some fights we win, some we lose. There will be other chances.”

“Twenty people are still dead. That’s not something that can be easily pushed aside,” Castiel narrowed his eyes. 

“What I’ve been trying to tell you, Castiel, is that there’s a bigger picture here. I’m talking ‘end of the world’ bigger picture. Twenty lives are nothing compared to that.”

Castiel clenched his jaw, “They’re still lives.”

“Look, I get you want to sit here and argue semantics all night, and who wouldn’t when it’s with me? But what I’ve been trying to say, is that the fight’s far from over, and the armies of Heaven aren’t, let’s just say, _ overflowing.  _ Six of my brothers died in an attempt to stop the breaking of the seal. We’re not here to play shoulder angel, we’re divine warriors. You play your part, we’ll play ours, and we’ll prevent Lucifer from leaving his cage.”

Castiel’s lips were chapped, his mouth a desert. 

“What happens next?”

Except, Dean was already gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Kudos and comments are always welcome, they keep those creative juices inspired!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure how much of this I'll write, but I wanted to get this out into the world and see if anyone enjoyed it. If you liked it, please let me know! I'm trying to give this my own spin, so there might be more diverging from canon if this continues. I don't know how reliable or consistant I will be in updates, but I hope something comes out of this.


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